A year back and we're on vacation up to northwest Arkansas, a nice cabin in the middle of somewhere outside Jasper. There's a small river offshoot that runs through the property, past a horse pasture and the contorted husk of a mid-century Chevy Impala that was probably a victim of the geometry of those hill roads.
It is spring break and it is full of that Ozarks lushness that gets crammed into your eyes and nostrils until your head's stuffed with it. My own head is full of a loud ringing sound as well, a sudden bout of tinnitus that I have chalked up to the weather and maybe the pollen.
I've decided to try to practice some form of mindfulness meditation on this trip. I spend every hike through those hills trying to remind myself to practice awareness of everything from the pinball ricochet of my thoughts to the gossiping of the white oaks.
I do a decent beginner's job of it, but the ringing in my ears makes it difficult. I discover that mindfulness of an unpleasant distraction makes me more aware of its unpleasantness. I assure myself that it's probably sinus trouble and will pass in time. The meditation is going well, under the circumstances, and so I continue it when we get home. Things go pretty well that second week, too. Until the anger starts.
The anger seems to come from nowhere, not unlike the ringing. It's a small, petulant thing the color of an old bruise. It mewls and sulks and only hollers when it feels safe doing so. But it is persistent. For weeks, it hangs on and fires off at anything at all, even a poorly-timed question from a child.
I practice as I have been trained. I am present for it. I try to dwell in it without judgment. I view it as an opportunity to learn and grow. I issue apologies as often as needed. But it keeps up.
I have never walked this ground before, but my studies have familiarized me with the map. I have been warned by monks and nuns that this sort of thing happens. When you calm the waters of your mind, you see more clearly the garbage you sunk below the surface. This is all to be expected. But I draw the questionable conclusion that the best way forward is to force a smile and continue on, hoping I won't yell today. My blood pressure keeps climbing and I chant "all is well".
It's not until the strain gets bad enough for me to hit my knees and let the words "All right, motherfucker, enough" escape my lips that I start to find relief. Following that curse, circumstances begin to fall into place. Suddenly I'm hearing what I need to hear when I need to hear it. My honesty with myself has opened the path to the work that I need to do now.
I do not get relief from the tinnitus, however. It's steadily worsening, going from a simple ringing to a loud ringing to a crickety metallic buzz that, on its worst days, is nigh at a dull roar.
Sleep is abandoning me, too. I do not realize it consciously, because I've been frogboiled on it for so long, but sleep no longer brings rest. It is a dark and dreamless hole that I fall into at night and claw my way out of every morning, wondering why eight solid hours feels like two too few. It comes and goes, though, and like I did with the anger, I assure myself that it's all fine. The buzzing and the tiredness are well within tolerable limits.
Within six months, I'm curled up in a ball in the guest bedroom while my wife holds me. I am wracked with sobbing and asking why it won't stop. I confess to her that I want to die. I am well past five years sober. I have literally prayed for death, but I do not desire a drink. I hold onto that like it's my mother's wedding ring.
Sometime before that, I'm on a FaceTime call with Lance and Patrick. Lance and Patrick are brothers in recovery. Lance is recovering from alcoholism and painkiller addiction, and today he's also recovering from a major foot surgery. Which means he has to take painkillers. To heal his body, he has to feed the voice in his head that wants him dead.
Lance is smiling. He is sitting with good posture. He is talking as we have taught each other to talk. He is looking deeply into his situation and is attempting a calm and positive outlook. But I can see that he's in the shadow now. It's a grey veil that blurs his face. He'll have to wear it until the drugs can stop. I can see it working on him. His three means of defense now are his training, his higher power, and his time spent in the company of other addicts like us. He has no bank of serenity to draw from.
I don't really worry for him, at least not consciously, because his actions are all correct. He is doing exactly as he has been trained to do. But he is withering and will continue to wither until it passes. When it does, the light goes back into his eyes and a knot turns loose in my gut.
Somewhere around then, I've gone down a rabbit hole of web essays with titles like "The Dark Side of Mindfulness". These articles are written by dabblers who have uncovered the terrible secret that meditation works exactly as monks and nuns have been saying it does for centuries. They are shocked to discover that not all medicine is anesthesia, that feeling better is not the same thing as getting better. Some of them appear to have even bailed out on the verge of a major breakthrough, simply because they had no studies and no teacher to encourage and explain.
"The antidote to suffering is more suffering", I forget which monk said, and my experience has borne this out. Meditation is not always serene. It uncovers and provokes. And even in post-meditation, I find my practice provoking me, keeping me off balance, transforming stone to sand and once-treasured joys into bittersweet memories. I kind of hate it, until I realize that it is alive.
I give in to uncertainty and gamble six thousand dollars on a treatment for my tinnitus and sleep problems. The treatment is proposed by a dentist who claims to specialize in something that is not an officially-recognized specialty. I tell one of my doctors that I fear I've wasted a lot of money on snake oil, but I'm desperate and out of ideas. He tells me that nothing in the treatment I've described sounds off. "Even the snake oil guys have gotten more evidence-based," he says. That helps some, but I also reflect that if I didn't have six thousand dollars to gamble, I'd be well and truly screwed. I feel almost guilty for having the money. The part of my brain that wants me to die insists that the only outcome I deserve is to discover that I've been had and will have to spend the next 40 years trying to find ways not to kill myself.
It's my turn in the shadow. I think of Lance and I start coaching myself through it. I keep doing what's asked of me. I make my appointments and go home worried. I tell my wife how I'm feeling. I exercise when I want to hide. You don't have to feel it, I tell myself. It won't always be pleasant. You just have to do the next right thing. The experience is like driving at night, unable to see beyond the limits of my headlights and trusting that the map isn't wrong.
While waiting for one of my treatments, I'm skimming the news and I read an article about the "sober curious" movement. This sounds like it is, for at least some of its adherents, rooted in real concern, but it also smells like the latest paleo/keto/coffee-with-butter trend to make the online influencer circuit. It's chic, and it's trying to separate itself from the stigma of those of us sad sacks who are sober because of a problem. Half of my brain applauds any alternative to the cultural cornerstone of booze as a necessity for adult human interaction. The other half says yeah, well, fuck you, you bunch of amateurs.
In my lifetime, I have given up drugs, smoking, drinking, and meat, in that order. I've given up every one of those things because of pain. I treasure every sacrifice and the spiritual path they support because they are bolstered by suffering and bafflement and joy, because they have built me and keep me alive. They are my offering to that which is greater than me, for the hope of awakening and a chance to help drive away the sorrows of the world.
But I find that my diseased ego is twisting even this to its purposes. It is stuffing these sacrifices into the Story of Me, the means by which it keeps me confused, frightened and asleep. My sacrifices make me more. My awareness makes me more there. My resentment is filled with images of vapid, waifish white women in yoga pants. It takes my noble, enlightened mind a few days to find the courage to unpack the shittier implications of that.
When you have to do it the hard way, it can be tough to find compassion for those who don't, and even tougher to find compassion for those who could use the hard way but who never seem to suffer enough to need it. I reluctantly gave in to sobriety and stepped onto the Buddhist path because the alternative was insanity and an early death. How easy it is to feel safe six years later, to recline from this vantage and mock the Chads and Beckys. To forget that I'm no more awake than they are. That I'm sicker than most of them.
Forgetting is so easy, even after dozens of jaw injections, minor surgery to the underside of my tongue, endless nibbles of progress and henpecks of worry. My ears are still ringing, but most days not as badly. Sleep is sleep and headaches a fraction of what they were. Never mind that none of this is actually over. It's better enough that I can pretend I'm in control. Why not give myself a medal and a veteran's parade?
That smugness is my own pair of yoga pants. My spirituality may not be the light and airy spirituality of the tourist, but without vigilance it becomes my own paleo path, a mere self-improvement project. Pain and provocation are the only things that keep me honest, because at bottom, I'm a tourist too. I'm just a little better at blending in with the locals. If I want to settle here, I need to do what every good tourist should do. I need to shut up and listen and keep exploring.
